Photo: McKesson (Keith) Blaylock.
Keith and Malinda Blaylock (also spelled Blalock) had a strong marriage. Wed in 1861, just as the Civil War was also cranking up, they served together (for about a month) in the Confederate Army, a part of Keith’s questionable effort to join the other side.
Though unorthodox, their commitment to each other endured. Last week, I delivered the “Keith-centric” version of their time in the Confederate military together. Another account details how first, Malinda was discovered to be a woman. She was immediately dismissed from the 26th North Carolina. Keith could not bear to be alone so that’s when he rolled in itchy weed and got himself discharged too, unwilling to be separated from his wife.
Both remained committed to the anti-southern cause. The Blaylocks joined the ranks of disrupters who sought to wreck the Confederacy in the mountains of western North Carolina. They weren’t the only ones. By the end of the war, bushwhackers were prevalent, like the band who took over a house between Lenoir and Wilkesboro. They looted area households until returning Confederate soldiers, coming home after the war, formed a militia to capture them. Keith and Malinda were not part of the Fort Hamby crowd, but they were fellow travelers.
Much of Keith’s hatred of the Confederate cause came from his stepfather’s view of the “War Between the States.” Austin Coffey saw the conflict as a ‘rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight’. When Coffey died at the hands of the Confederate Home Guard, Keith vowed revenge. He got it too. Following the Old Testament maxim of “an eye for an eye,” Keith Blaylock killed John Moore. Though Keith lost an eye himself in the exchange, he still got justice as he saw it.
Not really understanding his political views, local folks expected Keith to reenlist after he healed from his bout with poison oak. Instead, the Blaylocks retreated across the Tennessee line. Over in the Volunteer State, they recruited troops for a Michigan regiment. Keith also served the Union cause as a part of Kirk’s Raiders who engaged in their own brand of pillaging through western NC, but since they were on the winning side…
Keith Blaylock shed the murder charge when pardoned by post war governor W.W. Holden, who was himself impeached by the NC Legislature. It took a while but slowly, the rancor of the war began to calm down. The Blaylocks moved to Texas for a while but eventually returned to the mountains to live out their lives. They opened a store and in 1874, Keith ran for a seat in the General Assembly. He lost. Malinda died of natural causes in 1903. Eight years later, Keith was killed while operating a railroad hand car. At the time of his death, Keith was living in Hickory with one of his four sons. Folks asserted that his death was no accident. They believed the accident was actually payback for his deeds of a half-century earlier. Keith and Malinda are buried side-by-side at a cemetery in Avery County.
The political views of the Blaylocks remains controversial to this day. A husband and wife southern unionist duo who actively fought against the ancestors of many neighbors in this area is still not a celebrated choice. However, if you look at what they did in the light of their relationship to each other, ‘for as long as they both shall live’ as the wedding vow goes, they were tied together, even during a traumatic civil war.
